TEMPLE, Texas — The Temple High School culinary arts program will once again be serving up some delicious meals to the public as the department hosts its Tasty Tuesday program this school year. The first Tasty Tuesday of the 2023-2024 school year will be next Tuesday (October 17).
Tasty Tuesday is a monthly event hosted by the high school’s student-run restaurant, The Blue Plate. Students are involved in every aspect of the program, from planning the menu, to testing the recipes, to preparing and serving the meals on the day of Tasty Tuesday. Students serve in every role from chef to wait staff and everything in between at The Blue Plate during the event. There are two time slots available on each Tasty Tuesday, 11:30a.m.-12:15 p.m. or 12:30-1:15 p.m. and reservations are required. There are two choices of entrée each session and each meal includes a salad, entrée, dessert, and drink. The meals cost $13.50 per person and can be eaten in-house or ordered to go. The program gives the students the opportunity to take lessons from the classroom into a real-world setting to help prepare them for careers in hospitality.
“The kids really enjoy it because it is a real-life, real-world experience,” said Margaret Fyffe, culinary arts teacher at Temple High School. “They enjoy the feedback from the customers because they can grow from that. The students are learning to really provide service, make small talk with customers, take orders, and serve the meals. They are doing it all at both the back of house and the front of house.”
Reginald Fields and Cristobal Juarez are both seniors in the culinary arts pathway at Temple High School. Fields worked with Tasty Tuesday last year while Juarez will be working with the program for the first time this year. Both students are still deciding if they want to pursue careers in culinary arts but are excited about the possibilities of learning on the job at The Blue Plate.
“It gives you great experience in serving and plating food and making sure the presentation is nice,” Fields said. “It is a lot of fun and such a great experience in serving people. We also work together as a team because so many jobs have to work together to make it a success.”
“I think it will be a little bit of a rush,” Juarez said. “We get to practice for the real world in cooking and it will help you prepare for the real world. This will give me a chance to experience the restaurant working environment.”
That hands-on experience is one of the keys to the project-based learning featured in Temple’s Career and Technical Education (CTE) department and the program also gives the department a chance to create a bond with the community while preparing students to enter the work force.
“I think we are fortunate to have the instructors that we do because they have industry experience that helps shape how they train students and what it would look like in a normal apprentice program in the industry,” said Dr. Grant Ermis, interim director of CTE for Temple ISD. “Students are doing all the prep work leading up to the event and then using and practicing all the skills they would use. It really provides opportunities for our students to work in the workforce on our campus. It also gives them a great chance to interface with the community, so the community can see what our students are capable of doing in a workplace setting.”
You can find out more information about Tasty Tuesday, check out the latest menu, and make reservations through the Wildcat Workforce Facebook page. Other Tasty Tuesday events are scheduled for November 14th, December 12th, January 9th, February 13th, March 19th, April 9th, and May 14th.